Classical behavior of a macroscopic Schroedinger cat

Abstract

We study the dynamics of classical and quantum systems linearly interacting with a classical environment represented by an infinite set of harmonic oscillators. The environment induces a dynamical localization of the quantum state into a generalized coherent state for which the $\hbar \to 0$ limit always exists and reproduces the classical motion. We describe the consequences of this localization on the behavior of a macroscopic system by considering the example of a Schroedinger cat.